Optical character recognition (OCR) is a computer-based translation of an image of typewritten text into machine-editable text or a picture of characters into a standard encoding scheme. For example, a conventional OCR engine may be coupled to a flatbed scanner which scans a page of text or a picture. Because the page/picture is placed flush against a scanning face of the scanner, an image generated by the scanner typically exhibits even contrast and illumination, reduced skew and distortion, and high resolution. Thus, the OCR engine easily translates the text/picture in the image into the machine-editable text or the standard encoding scheme. When the image is of a lesser quality with regard to contrast, illumination, skew, etc., performance of the OCR engine may be degraded and the processing time may be increased due to processing of all pixels in the image. This may be the case when the image is generated by an imager-based scanner, because the text/picture is scanned from a distance, from varying orientations, and in varying illumination.